WASHINGTON – My friend, best-selling author Brad Meltzer, just finished another book based in D.C. called “The Fifth Assassin.”

Meltzer is the author of “The Inner Circle,” “The Book of Fate,” “The Tenth Justice,” and “The Zero Game” and recently spent a few hours at Politics and Prose in D.C. for a book signing.

I chatted with him about the eerie plot in his new book and whether he’s worried a disturbed person might attempt the unheard of crimes in “The Fifth Assassin,” which chronicles a serial killer who is recreating the crimes of four former presidential assassins.

Meltzer sometimes uses his friend’s names in his novels, and he used me — or at least my name Thomas Griffiths — as a character in his latest best-seller “The Inner Circle.”